They patented a device for modeling mixed radiation fields on high-energy heavy ion beams
TASS, January 11.Employees of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) have developed and patented a device that will allow simulating on earth all the conditions of a complex radiation field inside a spacecraft created by particles of Galactic cosmic radiation. The press service of the Institute writes about this.
"The Joint Institute for Nuclear Research has obtained a patent for a device for modeling mixed radiation fields on high-energy heavy ion beams for the purposes of experimental radiobiology. In fact, the invention implies the creation in terrestrial conditions of a simulator of a complex radiation field inside a spacecraft formed by particles of Galactic cosmic radiation (GCI) during flights in deep space," the report says.
It is noted that the creation of such a field for irradiation of biological objects is the most urgent task of space radiobiology. Thus, up to now, studies of the radiation effects of HCI have been carried out on accelerators only with beams of individual monoenergetic particles, while the radiation field inside the spacecraft is multicomponent. It includes neutrons, gamma quanta and charged particles up to very heavy nuclei. In addition, this radiation field has a very wide energy spectrum.
According to the authors of the invention, a wide beam of all components of the internal radiation field with an energy of up to 1 GeV /n (heavy nuclei with a charge of up to 27) is created behind the proposed simulator. This is quite enough to reproduce all the main radiation-induced effects of crew irradiation in space.
The simulator of the internal radiation field, as the press service added, is planned to be included in the installation for conducting experiments in the field of space radiobiology (SODIB) on a beam of iron nuclei on the radiobiological channel of the nuclotron of the NICA complex.
NICA is one of six projects of the megascience class in Russia, according to which a collider will be built at the Institute for Nuclear Research. This setup, scientists hope, will allow us to understand how protons and neutrons were formed in the Universe in the first moments after the Big Bang. The collider should start operating at full capacity in 2023.